This Week In Quotes: May 11 – May 24

I have to just say from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, it’s just we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America. Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people invest in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this, to me – I’m very uncomfortable with…This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides. It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity, stop attacking Jeremiah Wright. This stuff has got to stop, because what it does is it undermines, to me, what this country should be focused on. It’s a distraction from the real issues. It’s either going to be a small campaign about this crap or it’s going to be a big campaign, in my opinion, about the issues that the American public cares about. — Cory Booker

In Europe and America, governments have made promises they can’t afford to fulfill. At the same time, the decision-making machinery is breaking down. American and European capitals still have the structures inherited from the past, but without the self-restraining ethos that made them function.

The American decentralized system of checks and balances has transmogrified into a fragmented system that scatters responsibility. Congress is capable of passing laws that give people benefits with borrowed money, but it gridlocks when it tries to impose self-restraint. — David Brooks

People used to believe that human depravity was self-evident and democratic self-government was fragile. Now they think depravity is nonexistent and they take self-government for granted. — David Brooks

“Obama is asking America to be a polarized, angry country, where we are at war with each other, tearing at our own throats.” — Alex Castellanos

The Obama camp looks ominously like a cult of personality that tolerates no dissent; and the reelection campaign just doubled down on the European leftist notion that business is fair only when it operates in a sanitized, risk free manner. — Artur Davis, former congressman (D-Ala.)

A government study commissioned by the NFL Players Association found that athletes in the league lived longer than their male counterparts in American society. The study looked at 3,439 men who played for five years or longer in the league between 1959 and 1993 and discovered 334 deaths. Had the results mirrored statistical norms among American men, the researchers would have found 625 deaths. It turns out that professional football players have lower rates of cancer and heart disease. — Daniel Flynn

It is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity more than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. My view is, they’re going to run the country some day, so we should really explain why they’re so frickin’ stupid about so many things. — Jonah Goldberg

We have been spending the future for half a century. What [the anti-bailout forces] are really asking from the EU is not just to pay our bills, but also to pay for the deficit which we are still creating. I’m sure the Germans don’t want Greece to leave the euro. What I don’t know is how much they’re willing to pay. It depends on the German man on the street. Is he willing to pay his taxes to save Greece? I doubt it.” — Greece’s president, Karolos Papoulias

He said that his views were evolving on marriage. Call me cynical, but I didn’t think (Obama’s) views on marriage could be any gayer. — Rand Paul

There is a sickness out there that needs more than political leadership. It needs spiritual leadership. — Rand Paul

Whatever you think of Breitbart.com’s punishing vetting process, it has exposed just how little work the mainstream media did in investigating candidate Obama back in 2008. Not all of Team Breitbart’s revelations have been election-deciders, but they have often been stuff that a simple Google would have uncovered. If they revealed tomorrow that he’d had his own cross-dressing-themed sitcom on primetime TV in the 1980s, I wouldn’t be surprised. — Tim Stanley

People forgot that the first rule of protesting is “don’t throw sh*t at cops.” They have riot gear. You have a Bob Marley tee shirt and a dream. — Emily Zanotti

John Hawkins

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Over the past two centuries, the Democratic Party has had many powerful orators. Needless to say, Harry Reid, the Democratsâ€™ Senate Majority Leader since November of 2006, has failed to live up to this proud heritage on a titanic scale. Which is why, from The Home Office in Carson City, Nevada, we’re proud to present, The Top Ten Harry Reid gaffes!